Alpha Demo Hotfix 0.4.1 is now available for download, fixing a couple of critical issues with 0.4.0.
Addressing the elephant in the room
You might have seen some news or social media posts talking about a recent critical issue with the Unity engine, affecting every game built on engine versions 2017.1 onwards. Alpha Demo 0.4.0 runs on Unity 2020.3, so we've been hit by the same issue and have immediately taken action.
0.4.1 upgrades to a safe, patched version of Unity, in which this issue has been safely fixed. Please do not run outdated versions of the game that don't contain this patch - ensure you've updated to 0.4.1 before booting the demo.
Unfortunately, some side effects we've been seeing from the rapid upgrade include a small reduction in performance and some minor visual glitches compared to 0.4.0 - so we've thrown in something else, originally scheduled for the 0.5.0 release, to make up for it:
Controller support fixes!
Ever since the original 0.1.0 launch, the Alpha Demo's been functionally unusable for some players due to bizarre behavior - unresponsive inputs, random disconnections, pitch and yaw inputs not registering properly, and so on - that we've been attempting to fix for years.
With 0.4.1, we think we might finally have solved most of them!
This hotfix includes a full suite of fixes and improvements to the game's Steam integration and controller support, directly aimed at tackling the weird behavior you've been seeing. If you've tried to play the game previously, but been met with a wall of input issues you can't resolve, please give it another go and see if this resolves them.
So...did this have an impact on 0.5.0?
Thankfully, no. Our contingency plans covered us on this and we've been able to release 0.4.1 in a very short amount of time. Our next proper update hasn't been affected, and we're still full speed ahead on our next batch of features and improvements to the game, coming next year. We can't wait for you to play through all the new content in 0.5.0!